Carl Solms (1903 - 2004)

Among the younger children around the Romanovs
Carl Solms
was the third child of Reinhard Ludwig Solms,
brother of Eleonore Solms, wife of Ernst Ludwig Hessen
and
sister in law of the Tsarina.
Carl was the older brother of Friederike,
he was a few months older than Alexei Romanov who admired his as he was very sportive.
Don Hessen was two years, Ludwig hessen four years younger.
Philipp Solms and Dmitri Romanov nine or eleven years older.
Like his sister Friederike ha was a "baby sitter" of the editor of this website.

Legendes about Cremerie de Paris

The Tsarina had a passion for her children
She was not interested in politics, state affairs, court issues ...
All she liked were the children and her husband.

At night she told them fairytale stories
The most beautiful ones were about a certain "Cremerie de Paris",
a milk store at the iconic Halles Centrales foodmarket in heart of the French capital.

Cremerie de Paris is part of a century old mansion
where another child, the young Bourbon King Louis XIV had lived a long time ago.
It was the house of the children François and Catherine de Villeroy,
their father was the tutor of the young boy, later called Sunking.

Later they all lived at the Palace of Versailles.
The stories had a secret code "VB" so that adults
would know what their sorties were about.

The Tsarina knew these stories from her childhood friend
the French Empress Eugenie that was still alive and that lived the United Kingdom in exile.
Eugenie was a friend of her own grandmother, Queen Victoria
mother of her own mother Alice that had died.

Empress Eugénie had lost her only child and loved Alix (the Tsarina)
and sometimes before Alix went to bed,
Eugénie came to tell her about the Cremerie de Paris.

As a young woman Eugenie had married the French Emperor Napoléon III
with the project to make Paris become the world's most beautiful city.
The new foodmarket at Les Halles Centrales was the project of Eugénie.
She
knew the détail of everything.

The market was made of the Pavillons Baltard, 10 glass iron pavillions
and some beautiful newly erected avenues like the Rue des Halles.
On the corner of number 15 rue des Halles
and the centuries old rue des Déchargeurs
was located the Cremerie de Paris.

When a grand reception was going on in St Petersburg,
food was coming from this market brought to Russia with the Nord Express train.

The Tsarina with her smaller children,
Maria, Anastasia and Alexei talking about the Cremerie de Paris.

Every time the Tsarina come up with new the Cremerie de Paris stories,
so many things had happened in Les Halles,
the children couldn't wait for the next épisode ....

Access to the Cremerie de Paris Legends ...
Summer in 1910
August 1910 Nicolas II and his family came to Hessen / Germany
for a long vacation. The Tsarina was suffering from health problems
and had decided to take a cure in Bad Nauheim
near her brother Ernst Ludwig Hessen and her sister in Law Eleonore Solms.

This was the time Carl Solms became friends with his cousin Alexei
and the other Romaov children.
It is also the time he picked up some of the Cremerie de Paris Legends

Last survivor of the inner circle of the Romanovs
Carl Solms outlived the Romanov children for 86 years

Transmitting the legends half a century laterOver half a century after the death of the Romanov cousins in 1918
Carl Solms was sometimes babysitting the grandchildren of his brother ...